‘My Name Is Truth,’ ‘Chasing Freedom’ and ‘The Case for Loving’

At home in the world. The first time I heard this expression, I reveled in the very idea of it. It felt like the perfect life goal for all humankind: a feeling of complete belongingness and freedom, unconstrained by society’s perceptions of your capabilities, wherever you happen to be — at home or in public. The phrase resonates in three new picture books that highlight issues of race, gender and justice. These stories — about Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony, and the Loving v. Virginia case that struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage — all have main characters with a steadfast determination to change their lives. They are willing to fight their known hell for an unknown, possibly harsher fate. In each book, the law looms as a character, too, a force that can save lives or kill spirits. And all three books are, in different ways, interracial tales, reminding us that diverse coalitions have always worked together to achieve racial progress.

Isabella Baumfree, later known as the legendary preacher and orator Sojourner Truth, was born a slave. Her parents watched helplessly as each of their 12 children was sold off, sent away and never seen again. “My Name Is Truth” begins with an unflinching look at slave life, its harshness and brutality. In one illustration, Isabella is shown standing among sheep, waiting to be sold, as two white men haggle over her price (they settle on $150). After being bought and sold several times, Isabella decides to run away. By running free, she claims herself: “I owned myself now / I was not a slave.”

She took a new name to go with her new life: Sojourner Truth, because she traveled about, speaking the truth. She earned her name as she went around the country, exhorting abolition and gender equality.

Ann Turner’s story does not make reference to Truth’s famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, a welcome omission. Though it has come to be considered Truth’s signature lecture, historians have questioned whether she spoke those exact words, and it has overshadowed her decades-long contributions to the abolitionist movement, becoming a one-note encapsulation of her life’s work: “Sojourner Truth. ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ The end.” I hope this invigorating picture-book biography will encourage young people to learn more about Truth, and read some of her speeches.

James Ransome’s watercolor illustrations are a fine match for Turner’s straight-to-the-heart narrative. He captures the shifting heft of Truth’s life — the backbreaking labor, the delight of sleeping on a bed for the first time, the power of her sermons over listeners. Some of his illustrations go beyond the words to portray a cosmic, seemingly preordained life of service for Truth.

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Anthony and Tubman in "Chasing Freedom."

“Chasing Freedom” is another beautiful, richly detailed book, a work of historical fiction that imagines a friendship between Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony. Both women spent their lives working to end slavery and secure equal rights for women.

Nikki Grimes’s choice of format is notable. The story unfolds in a series of one-page vignettes, each building upon the previous one, as the two women meet for tea one afternoon and look back on their lives and work. This structure allows Grimes to introduce readers to movement leaders of the day. We see Frederick ­Douglass (who helped Tubman hide slaves in his home), John Brown (who told Tubman of his plan to raid Harpers Ferry) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (who founded women’s groups with Anthony).

Grimes’s layered history uncovers the public lives and private ruminations of Tubman and Anthony. In their conversation, set in 1904, the pair talk womanhood and protest. They nod as they discuss the ugliness of gender inequity. Tubman’s stories reveal her determination — most notably her 10-year slave rescue mission — and her laments. She expresses sadness (not regret) that her work travels ended her marriage. Anthony’s stories, too, detail the cost of her commitment — being vilified by the press, being shouted down at meetings, having doors slammed in her face. Along with presenting absorbing portraits of both women, this story of cross-racial friendship will allow older elementary-school readers to see connections between the abolitionist and women’s rights movements.

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Each of Michele Wood’s illustrations is a museum-worthy visual treasure. Her people are surrounded by rich-hued block quilt designs, embedded with symbols, including washboards, drums and crosses. This is a book that works on all levels.

“The Case for Loving” tells the story of Mildred and Richard Loving, who fell in love young and hard. She was black and he was white, and in 1958 it was illegal for them to wed in Virginia. They were able to marry in Washington, D.C., but after returning home they were arrested and charged with “unlawful cohabitation.” The judge gave them a choice: jail or banishment from Virginia. They moved to Washington, but later took their fight to the Supreme Court and won.

The Lovings did not consider themselves pioneers or crusaders for interracial marriage. In a 1966 Life magazine interview, Richard said: “We are not doing it just because somebody had to do it and we wanted to be the ones. We are doing it for us.” Still, they helped change history, and their story is given an added dimension as it is told through the lens of an author and an illustrator who are themselves an interracial married couple. Sean Qualls and Selina Alko collaborated on the skillful artwork that carries the story forward. Pages depicting good times feature symbols of childhood innocence — hearts, flowers, peppermint candies and butterflies. But when the law intervenes to delegitimize the couple’s love, the pages are more stark and spare — showing the shock of being arrested and the isolation of their city living.

Alko’s calm, fluid writing complements the simplicity of the Lovings’ wish — to be allowed to marry. Some of the wording, though, strikes a sour note. “Richard Loving was a good, caring man; he didn’t see differences,” she writes, suggesting, implausibly, that he did not notice Mildred’s race. After Mildred is identified as part black, part Cherokee, we are told that her race was less evident than her small size — that town folks mostly saw “how thin she was.” This language of colorblindness is at odds with a story about race. In fact, this story presents a wonderful chance to address the fact that noticing race is normal. It is treating people better or worse on the basis of that observation that is a problem.

All told, “The Case for Loving” is an engaging and important story, one that invites young people to think about the connections between love, law and justice. Along with “My Name Is Truth” and “Chasing Freedom,” it reminds us that for some the struggle to be at home in the world — truly free — has always been a mighty and hard-fought one.